Friday, February 3, 2012

For those who wonder how today's BLS job numbers of 243K could be enough to make the unemployment rate fall to 8.3%, we must always look for the seconday fact, ie... the one that the media rarely mentions, and that is, the number of people out of work who fell off the benefit rolls.

Government reports are written to make politcians look good, not to let the public know the actual amount of people unemployed, so when today's jobs report sent jubulence to the markets, few had time initially to see why the rate fell to 8.3%.

It was because 1.2 million people were no longer being counted as looking for work because their unemployment benefits had dried up.

it appears that the people not in the labor force exploded by an unprecedented record 1.2 million. No, that's not a typo: 1.2 million people dropped out of the labor force in one month! So as the labor force increased from 153.9 million to 154.4 million, the non institutional population increased by 242.3 million meaning, those not in the labor force surged from 86.7 million to 87.9 million. Which means that the civilian labor force tumbled to a fresh 30 year low of 63.7% as the BLS is seriously planning on eliminating nearly half of the available labor pool from the unemployment calculation. - Zerohedge

Charts courtesy of Bloomberg

So... it must be Obama election time again as the administration gears up to dazzle you with non-brilliance, and try to baffle you with BS.